Thursday, 11 September 2008

Living after death (part 1 of 3)

I was looking out through the window of my cab while coming back form office when I spotted the above line at a bus-stop. It was raining a little and many people were standing under it. The shelter itself was in a very bad shape. The roof of the shelter was leaking at some places and people were getting wet and murmuring to themselves. Before I could observe any further, the cab sped away at the green light and I got back to doing what I do best on the cab- doze off :-)

Today I remember that incident in context of today's leaders. There are banners and poster projecting themselves as super-heroes. They engrave their names on fly-overs, at bus-stops, near airports and whatever they can find space on. Sometimes, they are not even responsible for initiating these development works. In most of the cases, they are just lucky to be in power when the project is inaugurated, as was the case of the new airport. Yet, they shamelessly project themselves as saviors of the country when they cannot even think beyond the next elections.

Jaffer Sherrif, Ananth Kumar, HT Sangliyana, and many others are still alive and into active politics. They have their names put up on as many hoardings / bus-stops / flyovers as you can find in the city. Yet, how many of these visit such dilapidated structures and reconstruct them? In another five or ten years, how many of us would ever remember that these were our leaders? Will we ever remember that they lived at all?